Saturday, 30 April 2011

Esperance

Accommodation in Esperance was fairly scarce when we arrived so we took the last site at a less than impressive park for the night which was better than the two vans which had stopped at the first park as we did and been told there were no places. We felt rather pleased to get the last place at the next park as the two men from the vans followed Ian into the office. Sometimes you are just lucky.

After the first night we moved on to another park which gave us ocean frontage and was lovely. We walked along the pier and were entertained by the antics of a very large sea lion who gave an outstanding performance for ages, anyone who thinks these creatures don’t enjoy their job at Sea World should see this fellow. I swear he is an escapee who now just does his show for fun. It probably is no coincidence that he has his main stage at the fish cleaning station on the pier, perhaps hoping for a free feed as reward.

The shops were all but closed including the supermarkets for the holidays so we had to wait until Wednesday to restock after which we decided to move on on Thursday.

We are now at Cape LeGrand National Park which is absolutely magnificent and we have an ocean frontage again and can hear the crashing of the waves against the shore. This is where Matthew Flinders moored over night, and named it Lucky Bay. It must have seemed like paradise to him and we stood on the top of the cliff and wondered how it would have looked with his ship anchored below us.

We’ve been for a couple of walks. One up along the coast and today along the beach which is renowned as having the whitest sand and is certainly is the finest sand we have seen and a little reminiscent of Fraser Island. The waves, as they crash to shore are almost translucent then jade and finally deep blue. It’s really easy to just stand and watch and lose concentration as Sue did this morning ending up swamped and sitting down in the water very unceremoniously and quite wet. (I thought I would tell this tale now so that Ian loses the enjoyment when we get home from telling everyone how ridiculous I looked!)

We’ve extended our stay until Monday morning and hopefully by then one of the women’s magazines will be out with photos of the Royal Wedding which we missed as we don’t have phone or TV in the park. We were however kept amused by the football commentators occasionally giving us updates on the progress by interrupting without taking a breath from the football and telling us “they are at the Abbey, oh, what a shot that was, and he’s kicked it”. It was so comical we hardly missed seeing it.